After the Draft

• Selected by Chicago Cougars in 1972 WHA General Player Draft, first draft in WHA history, February 1972.
  
  
• Played for Team Canada squad that won silver medal at 1972 World University Games in Lake Placid.
  
  
• Signed WHA contract with Ottawa on Aug. 3, 1972.
  
  
• Played on first Ottawa Nationals WHA team in league's inaugural 1972-73 season and appeared in the first-ever WHA game on Oct. 11, 1972, vs. Alberta.
  
  
• Was member of Ottawa (WHA) team that relocated to Toronto after a sale to John Bassett on May 2, 1973.
  
  
• Missed part of 1975-76 season with hip injury.
  
  
• Was member of Toronto (WHA) team that relocated to Birmingham, Ala., on June 30, 1976.
  
  
• Was one of only three players to play for the same WHA franchise in Ottawa, Toronto, and Birmingham.
  
  
• Led Austrian league in points (58) and penalty minutes (161) with Salzburg in 1977-78.
  
  
• Led Austrian league with 110 PIM for Vienna in 1978-79.
  
  
• Led Austrian league with 103 PIM for Vienna in 1979-80.
  
  
• Named to IIHF World Championship Pool B All-Star Team with host nation Austria in 1982.
  
  
• Led Austrian league in assists for Lustenau (66) in 1984-85.
  
  
• Qualified for Austrian citizenship while playing professionally in Austria from 1977 to 1986.
  
  
• Retired in 1986 with Austrian league record for career assists (393).

International Tournaments

Miscellaneous

Full Name: Richard Glen Cunningham

Post-Draft Teams: Trent (OUAA); Ottawa/Toronto/
Birmingham (WHA); Buffalo (NAHL); Salzburg, Vienna, Villach, Kapfenberg, Lustenau (Austria)

Education: Attended Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Career Beyond Hockey: Opened a sporting-goods business during his playing days in Austria, where his stores became that nation's exclusive dealer of Bauer and Cooper hockey products. ... Moved to Barbados after his retirement and did some work as an honorary ambassador for Austria. He later moved to New Zealand and spent the early 2000s living on a boat, which was consistent with his history of living life to the fullest. During his years in Villach, Austria, as one of the highest-paid hockey players in the country, he had lived on a mountainside farm, and after retirement, he and his wife sailed their boat around the world.
 

The Olympic Controversy

At age 32, Cunningham represented Austria in the 1984 Olympics at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. However, he played only after weathering a controversy over his eligibility for the Games. Prior to the Olympics, both the Americans and Finns protested Team Austria's inclusion of Cunningham, as well as some players on the Italian and Canadian teams, because he and these others had played major-league pro hockey in North America. His amateur status became the subject of debate, but the International Olympic Committee ruled that only players who had played in the NHL were ineligible for the Olympics. Since Cunningham's experience had come in the defunct WHA, he was deemed eligible. The Cunningham controversy and ruling helped to expose the IOC and IIHF's double-standard on amateurism in the Olympics. The IOC was effectively ruling that the former WHA had not been a major league, even though many of its players had left the NHL for the WHA so that they could earn more money. Since the Olympics of the time were supposed to be for amateurs only, the inclusion of a player who had been well paid in a North American major league added to the outcry involving Soviet bloc athletes, whose living expenses were fully subsidized by their governments. By the next Olympics at Calgary in 1988, the strict IOC rules had been relaxed, and even former NHL players were allowed to play.

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